Government Investment in Renewable Energy Nearly as Popular With Swing Voters as Death of Osama bin Laden

Voters just love government investment in renewable energy — much more than their representatives in Washington, it seems. I was reading an analysis of the State of the Union Address based on the response of “a group of 50 swing voters armed with dial meters” and came across this nugget:

Not surprisingly, the moment in the speech that brought the most positive reaction was Obama’s mention of the death of Osama bin Laden. It drew an average reading of 80 on the 0-100 scale used by the meters. Obama’s call for more investment in renewable energy drew nearly as strong a reaction, however, said Andrew Baumann, another of the pollsters who conducted the study. The passages of the speech that talked about phasing out subsidies for oil companies and competing with China and Germany for new developments in wind power and solar energy did particularly well.